Reviews and More

Little Miss Sunshine was nominated for numerous high-profile awards, so it’s been on my To Watch list for quite some time. I finally got around to seeing it this weekend, and have to say that it was definitely worthwhile. Granted, I didn’t go as crazy over it as I thought I would, but it was still an excellent movie.

The film is about the highly dysfunctional Hoover family and their trek from Albuquerque, N.M. to the Little Miss Sunshine beauty pageant in Redondo Beach, CA. First, we have the parents, Richard (Greg Kinnear) and Sheryl (Toni Collette). Richard is one of those motivational speakers, and he’s trying to turn his nine-step “Refuse to Lose” plan into a book. However, he constantly gets the runaround from Stan Grossman (Bryan Cranston), the agent who told him the plan would be a sure thing, and has to deal with the financial implications of the deal falling through. Sheryl is harried and weary from trying to hold everything together while Richard works his program, and she’s just about at the end of her rope too.

Then we have Sheryl’s brother, Frank (Steve Carrell), the nation’s No.1 Proust scholar who is recovering from an attempted suicide. He tried to slash his wrists after one of his grad students left him for the No.2 Proust scholar. Frank spends most of the movie talking to his nephew Dwayne (Paul Dano), a high school student who has taken a vow of silence on account of Nietzsche. He’ll only break that vow once he’s accepted at the Air Force Academy.

There’s also the heroin-shooting, foul-mouthed grandfather (Alan Arkin) who constantly criticizes everything his son Richard does. And finally, we have Olive (Abigail Breslin), a seven-year-old girl who likes entering beauty pageants despite not being of the classic body type.

Put all these characters together in a beat-up VW van that will only start in second gear, and you’ve got the makings of a great dark comedy.

My Reaction: Little Miss Sunshine is definitely a character-driven movie. It doesn’t matter what situations the characters get into or what happens at the pageant; the main thrust of the film is the different realizations that each character makes about him- or herself. This works because each character is so clearly defined throughout the movie. We get an immediate sense of who they are and who they want to be, and that’s critical to the success of the movie. The journey was the fun part, and I’m glad I went along for the ride.

Overall, I give Little Miss Sunshine 8.0 stars out of 10 and thought it (mostly) lived up to all the hype surrounding it.

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As I mentioned a couple weeks ago, I want to get into some new TV shows during the summer rerun season because I hate not having anything good to watch. Based on some reader recommendations, I decided to go with House and Ugly Betty as the two newest additions to my lineup. Since the programming schedules for my other favorite shows haven’t been regular this past month, I decided to get a jump on my summer viewing by watching the first few episodes of House. Here’s what I think so far.

I went into the show not knowing anything about it except that it’s a medical drama and that it stars Hugh Laurie. Beyond those two tidbits, I had no idea what to expect from these episodes.

Laurie stars as Dr. Greg House, the head of the Diagnostic Medicine department at Princeton-Plainsboro Teaching Hospital. House’s team includes Dr. Eric Foreman (Omar Epps), Dr. Allison Cameron (Jennifer Morrison), and Dr. Robert Chase (Jesse Spencer). These four use a method called “differential diagnosis” to identify the various ailments that their patients suffer from.

In this way, House is unlike any other medical show I’ve seen. It’s part CSI in the way the doctors have to use clues from each case to try to determine what’s wrong with the patients. I have to say this is a pretty unique approach, and I really like what I’ve seen thus far.

The supporting cast consists of Robert Sean Leonard (the Dead Poets Society lead!) as Dr. James Wilson, the head of Oncology and House’s only friend, as well as Lisa Edelstein, who plays Dr. Lisa Cuddy, the Dean of Medicine at the hospital and House’s boss/antagonist.

The first three episodes were the “Pilot”, “Paternity”, and “Occam’s Razor”. I thought the pilot did an excellent job of establishing House’s character, but I have to admit I didn’t really understand what these doctors were trying to do. I had to look up the whole differential diagnosis thing after the fact, so while I was watching, it just seemed like these doctors were issuing random guesses and ordering meds based on nothing more than hunches. Lawsuit city was the first thing that came to mind!

Anyway, House is definitely a keeper, so look for regular recaps in the near future. Of course, I’ll be starting from Season One, so I’ve got a long way to go to catch up!

When I worked in the automotive industry, planning was an essential part of everything that we did. We had to plan production well in advance of customer orders, we had to plan for equipment changes with each new model year, and we had to plan for personnel changes due to fluctuations in demand. All of those plans were based on several different variables, but they all had a common denominator as well: the company’s budget.

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Several of my friends operate small businesses, and one of their top complaints is that they don’t have time to keep accurate accounting records. Then of course when tax time comes around, their books are a complete mess and it takes two or three times as long to go through everything in order to do their returns.

That’s not very efficient and could lead to costly errors, so you might want to listen to what the Easton accounting firm of Murphy & Co. has to say on the subject. Murphy & Co. recommend that small business owners outsource their accounting tasks to local firms that specialize in providing affordable services. That way, the business owners can be sure that their books and records will be in order at any given point in time, and can devote themselves to taking care of other aspects of their business.

That sounds like great advice, so if you’re in the greater Boston area, be sure to contact Murphy & Co. to learn more about what they can do for you.

The new comedy Blades of Glory starring Will Ferrell and Jon Heder was No.1 at the box office this weekend, with a haul of $33 million. Another new entry, Disney’s animated Meet the Robinsons, came in second with receipts of $25.1 million. Neither of those films is on my short list of movies to see, so I wasn’t particularly interested in seeing how they did.

Last week’s No. 1, TMNT, slipped down to the fourth spot with just $9.2 million in ticket sales, while the epic 300 held pretty steady with $11.2 million. I’m going to pass on TMNT, but will probably see 300 at some point in the future.

Here’s the entire top 10 for this weekend:

1. Blades of Glory, $33 million
2. Meet the Robinsons, $25.1 million
3. 300, $11.2 million
4. TMNT, $9.2 million
5. Wild Hogs, $8.4 million
6. Shooter, $8 million
7. Premonition, $5.1 million
8. The Last Mimzy, $4 million
9. The Hills Have Eyes 2, $3.9 million
10. Reign Over Me, $3.7 million

Prior to moving into blogging as my main source of online income, I was a part-time writer for one of the largest SEO companies out there. That job allowed me to gain a great deal of insight into what it takes to drive a website’s search engine rankings to the first page of Google, MSN, and Yahoo. Obviously it’s not an easy task, and the results won’t appear overnight, but if you’re looking for visibility and if you can afford it, then SEO is the way to go.

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